helpmeplease123

I suppose they have... I can strongly suggest watching TOWIE and/or Geordie shore for reference. Seriously though, I know ridiculous amounts of people who have had plastic surgery in the UK and i've also seen how common it has become just in the last few years.

I'm not really sure why its necessary to have spent any particular length of time in a country to make observations and get a feel for the culture, however to answer your question. I have been at University here for 6 months so far. However, I have also had an American boyfriend for a long time and so spent 6 months here last year and before that around 2 months per year. When we came on vacation here it was always a constant stream of visits with friends and family and obviously at University in 6 months, you meet a lot of people. I also have English friends living in various parts of the country that I have spent a lot of time with and many of my boyfriends friends came to visit us in England.
I have spent time with a lot of Americans in my life and on a side note, love them more than the average English person - obviously my family and oldest friends in England top the pack but I love the warmth and genuine interest people have in people they don't even know yet over here.
Maybe you don't agree that the timeframe is sufficient but most of my interactions have been with a generation that i've seen changing MASSIVELY in England and Norway compared to my parents one (although even in that generation there has definitely been a huge increase in surgery/materialism etc. in recent years). I would say that maybe if you're spending time with a different generation (which i'm making a conclusion on from your posts and so apologies if i'm wrong) then changes both here and abroad may not come across so vividly.

JRG67

Quite a few UK friends have become plastic surgeons, and some docs make money on the side giving botox to friends.

JRG67

+1

yellowroom

Sorry to be late to the conversation (fashionably late...?)

On the socialising with work colleagues question - I work for a British company, and my office has trebled in size here since I arrived a year ago. Most of the new arrivals are from out of town, state and even from abroad, and we've recently started to get a bit of a weekly social group going after work - meals out, pub quiz, cinema, bowling, that kind of thing.

It is noticeable though that we've had to get a critical mass of new people to get it to take off - our established colleagues just aren't interested. The only regular "local" attendee is someone who has recently separated from their spouse and so is looking to expand their social horizons. Whether we'll sustain momentum when new arrivals get established in the area will be interesting to see.

I don't think anyone is pretending we're all going to be bessie friends - it's fairly casual but we enjoy the company and even have something close to a bit of banter going on!

Apart from that - I'm an unsociable git anyway, so I've not been overly worried about a lack of a social circle, and in some ways I was worried about making friends here making it harder to eventually move again. I can testify that following up the inital "ooh we must have coffee sometime" turns into evasion and excuses when you take someone up on that suggestion though.

JRG67

I think it is always more difficult to make friends, if one is the new kid on the block/ a foreigner. I am sure many Americans coming to work in the UK would find that the British are cliquey, and go home asap, once they are married etc.
The number of pubs in the UK has decreased dramatically, and with the recession, people with kids are tending to drink at home and not socialize so much. I think this is true for much of the Western world.

yellowroom

In my 20+ years of working in the UK, every place I worked at had at least some kind of casual out-of-office social life going on, and it was rarely centred solely around the pub. Whether it was sports, quizzes, movies, food, clubbing, whatever. And new people were always invited.

Maybe another cultural difference is that in the UK, it's seen as responsibility of the existing group of people to reach out and welcome someone new (whether at work, in your street or church or club or whatever). Whereas over here in the US, a new person generally has to elbow their way into things and say "can I come too?". From a UK perspective that can seem a bit pushy and/or a reflection on them not doing a good job of being welcoming and inclusive!

zargof

This thread is a laugh isn't it? It starts off with everyone whining about they can't make friends, then when someone who while admittedly naive and overly effusive tries to give some helpful hints what do they get? Mockery and insults.

Did you ever think that by being a bunch of miserable cynical gits that that could possibly preclude you from making friends? Maybe, it's a possibility right?

Oh and it's rather rich for AmerLisa to bang on about someone else spouting shite on here, considering some of the utter bollocks she's come out with over the years.

Anyway, must dash, I have friends waiting.

Sally Redux

I didn't realize they were actual documentaries.

AmerLisa

Love you too!

helpmeplease123

That's ok. I suppose you've been in the US a while.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...mpaigners.html

Sally Redux

Terrible! They are not interested in that kind of thing at all where I live.

helpmeplease123

It's very sad and it's happening so fast... I'm only 26 and I can already see a massive difference between my teen years and those teenagers now/their priorities.

kimilseung

A quick look at that seems to only give fixed data, no comparative data. It might mean that things are exactly the same now as they always have been. Did I miss the comparative data?

Wanting to be like Clinton, three times more than the Queen, that is not too bad.

Sally Redux

It's the stench of urban and social decay.

kimilseung

Ahh, got it, just read the Homesickness thread.